Swarms of NASA shuttle managers, engineers and contractors are discussing the planned December launch of the space shuttle Discovery and its seven-astronaut crew during a two-day review at the agency’s Florida spaceport this week. 

Known as a Flight Readiness Review, the meeting began early Tuesday morning at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida and is expected to set a hard Dec. 7 launch date for Discovery’s STS-116 mission to continue assembly of the International Space Station (ISS).

NASA’s STS-116 mission is slated to mark the agency’s first night launch in four years. It will be the third shuttle flight of 2006 and the second dedicated to space station construction.

Veteran shuttle flyer Mark Polansky is commanding Discovery’s STS-116 spaceflight. He and his crewmates plan to deliver a new piece of the ISS—a short spacer truss known as Port 5—to ISS, rewire its power grid and ferry NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, who will replace Expedition 14 flight engineer Thomas Reiter, to the orbital laboratory.

NASA plans to hold a news conference to set to official launch date for STS-116 on Wednesday. The briefing will begin no earlier than 3:00 p.m. EST (2100 GMT) and be broadcast live on NASA TV.

 Click here for SPACE.com’s nifty–and free–feed of NASA TV.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Space & Astronomy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.